One’s future status is somewhat dependent on our past and present ones. FPM independence
and lack of conflict of interest permits pronouncements of financial miscreants.
Whereas other sources, such as brokerage research or industry adherents like
mainstream media, maybe reluctant to spite the hand that feeds them. In less
measure as well, FPM will be signalling singled-out flagships and heroes of
progressive good and fair professional financial conduct. This last propriety
of financial conduct is our standard expectation of professionals and
operations, therefore of less concern for us.

April is the second anniversary of “No Smoke Without Fire”,
initially a blog exposition. See here. Then
FPM principals echoed “What To Do!” disaffection or disillusionment about the pernicious
status quo of investment management and banking in general. From FPM principals
being not little unaffected by the wrought global financial crisis. As
prototype case study our enterprise raison d’etre was made vivid by the
association between Blackstone Group and SAC Capital (now private corner-shop
"Point72 Asset Management"). That mild reporter termed “insider
trading scandal” is more telling than mere smoke and mirror PR, about
corruption in corporate banking life over the past 35, at least, years.

A Diary and Degree RecommendationWith this missive, Kristian, as a founding principal of FPM,
flowers into the Spring of Joys on Easter Day, after an "Icarus Type of Year in 2014". Like
the myth of Icarus, FPM in aggregation of meditating and endeavour with our
enterprise, reach excessive heights, and yet sadistically our self / ego does
not let our feet touch the ground! Icarus
was the Greek mythological protagonist of complacency and hubris. Making an
escape with wings made of feather and wax, and therefore warned not to fly too high
close to the sun since it would melt the wax, or fly close to the sea as the salt degrade. Therefore Icarus was
heedless and crashed into the sea, flying too high. Also, in equal measure of philosophical
antithesis is 'Phoenix Rising From the Ashes'. But of course, before Spring
arrives the season of Winter descends. This holistic approach is relevant in
FPM reputation model of financial perpetrators having 'priors'.

FPM’s Kristian on Christmas Day
gutting road-kill deer near Cornwall.

So on Christmas Day, I was gutting and skinning my first ever
road-kill deer with friends in Cornwall (see picture above). As a diary there is also a tenuous link to the FPM premise. Between
Cornwall and London the car party passed a premier hedge fund related name of a
place, "Bridgwater" in the county of Somerset, England. Bridgwater is actually spelt
without an ‘e’ in ‘bridge’ on the road signs. Oh, my dear Lord! We have made
punt for one of our prospective FPM enterprise partners, and a pun on the word
"deer", respectively; hopefully noted by the aficionados of my joined-up
verbiage.

As Easter, in one original sense, was a pagan Goddess of
Spring, as a symbol of fertility we liken our ‘think-do in-time ideas’ as a new
birth: of assigning reputation not only through a 'financial hate list' as some
describe it, but with praiseworthy exemplifications too. With our
groundbreaking exemplar case studies involving Blackstone Group, as largest
investor in insider-trading scandalised SAC Capital, FPM implement corporate and principals' reputation in vogue. FPM
permanently crystallises the negative taints and rumoured impression from associations
in financial malfeasance of the measured past. Even whether the entity in
legality or prejudiced law was ever convicted and / or acquitted is necessarily
irrelevant to one having garnered a good or bad reputation. Not too much unlike
what financial ratings agencies and auditors are responsibly supposed to do in
earnest fiduciary professionalism.

Unfortunately the fiduciary tier of financial responsibility
from institutionalisation has bought them intocollusive conflict of
interest relationships verging on cronyism. Thereby evoking incidences of
collaboration corruption corroboration and other deceitful tricks and traits
which FPM manifests into a reputation i.e. no smoke with fire. A light allusion
or hint to a financial misdemenour is like stating "mud sticks".
While this counter-PR, setting the record straight, is a virtuous enterprise.
In an old fashion sense, battling
lies and truth-telling as a commercial enterprise has sought a backer to
sponsor these esteemed value-set with pride. Who better to uphold integrity
than the purveyors of it! Bridgewater Associates’ highly reputable profile serves as a counter-point
to financial roguery. Also, while the NSWF:Reputation
garnered firms’ or principals’ may having rising and ebbing ratings over time,
the reasons, at least in the mind of FPM’s principles, is clear. At a time when
unprecedented and rife financial malfeasance has contributed to the deepest
economic recession since 1930’s, our mission no less is to follows a checking
mechanism. An FPM progressive stop-check rationale here is echoing a public
comment published in the LA Times, about how to treat insider-trader trading
cheats, from the now demised Drexel Burnham Lambert’s scandals:

“As the courts and
legal system are so lenient on so-called first-time offenders… may I suggest
an appropriate punishment in the form of public humiliation?”